FALLS CHURCH, Va. –The woman who helped free an entire community from a toxic dump, literally rewriting environmental laws in the process, was so shy at the start of the struggle she tried to hide behind a tree when neighbors called on her.

Lois Gibbs took to the stage that day 35 years ago, in the seemingly idyllic community of Love Canal, N.Y., and began to find her voice. Transforming herself from homemaker to hell-raiser, she …

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More than 10 years ago, Robert Gold sought to do what many Americans have dreamed of their whole lives: patent an idea.

Gold developed a breakthrough in wireless communications that would help people speak to one another with less interference and greater security.

Then it disappeared like a dropped call.

The Department of Defense concluded that his invention could be a national security threat in the wrong hands and slapped Gold’s patent application with a so-called “secrecy order” …

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Millions of undocumented migrants to the US will be given full legal status under sweeping immigration reforms due to be published on Tuesday by the Senate that will even include family members who have already been deported.

A summary of the bill, seen by the Guardian, is “surprisingly generous”, according to immigration experts who say it has the potential for transforming the lives of the estimated 11m people currently living in the legal shadows.

A further 400,000 …

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Sal Castro, a social studies teacher who played a leading role in 1960s Chicano student walkouts, has died at age 79.

Castro had thyroid cancer and died Monday at his home, his wife, Charlotte Lerchenmuller, told the Los Angeles Times.

The son of Mexican immigrants, Castro was born in Los Angeles but spent some of his early childhood in Mexico. He couldn’t speak English when he returned to Los Angeles in the second grade and was …

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KUWAIT CITY – A Kuwaiti court on Monday sentenced main opposition leader and former MP Mussallam al-Barrak to five years in prison after he was convicted of insulting the emir, an AFP correspondent said.

“The court has sentenced the defendant Mussallam al-Barrak to five years in prison with immediate effect,” said judge Wael al-Atiqi.

Barrak was convicted of making statements deemed offensive to the ruler of the oil-rich Gulf state, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, at a public …

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The spate of strong bank earnings continues.

On Tuesday, Goldman Sachs reported first-quarter profit of $2.2 billion, or $4.29 a share, driven by strength in its investment banking business as well as its investing and lending unit.

Across Wall Street, banks are showing signs of strength. Last week, JPMorgan posted a 33 percent jump in quarterly profit, to $6.53 billion. Profit at Wells Fargo rose 22 percent, to $5.17 billion. Citigroup profit surged by 30 percent while …

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There’s not much to say about Monday’s Boston Marathon attack because there is virtually no known evidence regarding who did it or why. There are, however, several points to be made about some of the widespread reactions to this incident. Much of that reaction is all-too-familiar and quite revealing in important ways:

(1) The widespread compassion for yesterday’s victims and the intense anger over the attacks was obviously authentic and thus good to witness. But it …

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Iran has been struck by its most powerful earthquake for nearly 40 years, with tremors felt across Pakistan, India and the Middle East.

The epicentre of the 7.8 magnitude quake was near the south-east city of Khash, close to the Pakistani border, the US Geological Survey said.

Offices were evacuated in Abu Dhabi and tall buildings swayed in the Indian capital Delhi, witnesses said.

Iranian state TV has reported at least 40 people killed.

However, one official was quoted …

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ALBANY, N.Y. – Several labor unions say that more than $400,000 in contributions by Walmart since 2001 helped bring about the creation of an unusual taxpayer-paid subsidy last month to help employers offset a higher minimum wage in New York.

Senate Republicans, who had long opposed an increase in the minimum wage along with some business groups, called the unions’ claim “complete and utter nonsense.” Republicans senators never had any conversation with Walmart on the …

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IN 2005, SAM ALLISON, a Tennessee housepainter in his 30s, arrived at Daniel Hoover Children’s Village, an orphanage outside Monrovia, Liberia. He’d come to adopt three children, but ended up with four: five-year-old Cherish; her nine-year-old brother, Isaiah; their 13-year-old sister, CeCe, who had taken care of them for years; and Engedi, a sickly infant whom Sam and an adoption broker had retrieved from “deep in the bush.” The older children’s father had sent them …

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